Environmental anthropology is a branch of anthropology that studies the complex relationships that exist between humans and the environments in which they live. It seeks to comprehend how human societies interact with and influence their natural environments, as well as how environmental factors influence human cultures.
This interdisciplinary field studies the complex and dynamic interactions between people and their environments using insights from anthropology, ecology, biology, geography, and other related disciplines. This can take many forms, such as studying human hunting/gathering patterns tens of thousands of years ago, archaeological studies of early agriculturalists and their impact on deforestation or soil erosion, or how modern human societies are adapting to climate change and other anthropogenic environmental issues.
In the 1960s, anthropologists borrowed methods and terminology from growing developments in ecology and applied them to understand human cultures, resulting in the development of this sub-field of anthropology.
Key concepts and areas of focus within environmental anthropology include:
- Cultural Ecology: Cultural ecology investigates how human cultures adapt to their environments and shape and transform them. This entails researching how different societies use and manage natural resources, developing technologies, and establishing sustainable practices.
- Human-Environment Interaction: Environmental anthropologists investigate how humans modify, adapt to, and are influenced by their surroundings. This includes investigating subsistence, settlement, and resource use patterns, as well as the cultural beliefs and practices that shape these interactions.
- Ethnobotany and Ethnozoology: These subfields study the interactions between cultures and the plants and animals that they use for food, medicine, shelter, and other purposes. Researchers are looking into how local knowledge is passed down through generations and how it can help with sustainable resource management.
- Indigenous Knowledge and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK): Environmental anthropology places importance on understanding and respecting the knowledge systems of indigenous peoples. Traditional ecological knowledge encompasses the cumulative body of knowledge, practices, and beliefs developed by communities over generations to sustainably manage their environments.
- Political Ecology: This viewpoint investigates the political and economic factors that influence human-environment relationships. Political ecology studies how power dynamics, economic structures, and political institutions affect environmental decision-making and resource allocation.
Environmental anthropology adds valuable insights to academic research as well as practical initiatives aimed at fostering long-term relationships between human societies and their environments. It is a developing subfield of anthropology because the challenges of understanding and addressing human-caused environmental problems such as climate change, species extinction, plastic pollution, and habitat destruction necessitate an understanding of the complex cultural, political, and economic systems that have caused these problems.
